Using FeedBack to Chart, Diagnose, and Fix Google Data Feeds

VersaFeed has released a powerful new feature called FeedBack, which enables merchants to see detailed information on the health and status of their data feed. FeedBack will appear as a new top-level menu item in the client accounts and can be launched by navigating to FeedBack > Google.

FeedBack charts various issues and metrics in your Merchant Center feed and AdWords account over the last 30 days. In the upper right, you can click "60" or "90" days to adjust the time range. Below the Merchant Center chart is a table containing each of the individual metrics which can be isolated or combined to see specific issues. Let's look at both of these features individually:

Chart options

Switch between chart modes with these three buttons below the chart:

Overview: Default view, showing total items, in-stock items, and disapproved items
Details: Selects all errors that your feed has experienced
All: Selects both the default view (total, in-stock, and disapproved) as well as all errors

You can also select any combination of particular feed issues. To select one individual issue, simply click the (Show solo) icon. To select multiple issues, click the (Show/Hide) icons.

Time range

Quick links for the "Last 30, 60, 90 days" are available at the top right for adjusting the time period of the chart. You can also change the URL parameters manually if you need more specific dates. For example, if you wanted to see the first week of December 2016 you would add the following to the URL:

?start_date=2016-12-01&end_date=2016-12-08

Example usage

Giving users the ability to drill down on individual feed issues and chart them over time opens up a new world of insight and debugging opportunities...

By selecting a 90-day history and clicking "Product pages cannot be accessed", users can see if they are experiencing server connectivity issues (or server downtime). If there are patterns (e.g., every Friday errors increase) your server load might be too high. Conversely, if only one spike of errors was seen across the last 90 days, it's likely a spurious issue not needing further investigation.

Google's Diagnostics area does not allow users to separate issues in the chart, which makes it hard to determine the root cause of each error. As an example, it's not uncommon for Google to report a nominal amount of price and availability mismatch errors due to website-to-feed-to-Google latency. However, a persistent spike in such errors could indicate a newly-introduced import or mapping issue. With FeedBack, simply select both price and availability errors and you can easily see if the problem is dissipating by viewing the chart.

If you're unlucky enough to receive a Google suspension warning email, you can check your error history using FeedBack and see how the problem has unfolded, and determine if and when Google has re-approved your fixed items so you can request a re-evaluation.

Hover over specific points on the chart to obtain per-day errors and stats.

The AdWords tab tracks four critical performance metrics: Clicks, Cost, Conversions, and Revenue. This tab is not available to all users.

Viewing individual items

Lastly, for power users, there is a "View Items" icon directly under the chart that will take you to a special feed search page showing only items exhibiting the errors that you selected. For example, if you are tracking down image issues in your feed, you might select both "Invalid images" and "Incorrect image encoding" within FeedBack, and then click "View Items".

You will then be directed to our "Feed Search" page and shown your most recent Google feed — but the page will only display items with the image issues you selected. Using this method, you can now reliably view and fix issues within your Google feed with laser precision.

We hope you enjoy using FeedBack as much as we enjoyed creating it. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions or comments.